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Shooting Twice, at Once

By Kerri MacDonaldJul. 13, 2011Jul. 13, 2011

When shooting stills and video simultaneously, Doug Mills, a staff photographer in the Washington bureau of The New York Times, has tried a creative trick or two. He once strapped the video camera around his neck, using his stomach to hold it in place. The results, he said, were “freewheeling and dangling and very difficult to work with.”

On Wednesday, he put his newest idea to work: a double-decker arrangement that almost looks as if his camera is wearing another camera as a hat. On assignment to cover the arrival of Roger Clemens at a federal courthouse in Washington, Mr. Mills mounted his video camera atop his still camera. The video footage is peppered with the sound of the still camera’s shutter. But the results look good.

Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe top camera shoots video, the bottom shoots stills.

Trawling the Internet, Mr. Mills found a micro-ball head on a hot-shoe mount. It arrived in the mail Tuesday. He began testing it when he woke up Wednesday. Mr. Mills found that the makeshift rig actually helped stabilize the video camera, though he had to pay more attention to the way he held the still camera to ensure he had the right angle for video.

Mr. Mills has sent footage to The Times’s video unit a number of times in recent months, even as he filed still photos. “When I can supply both by using devices like this, I think it benefits the paper,” he said. “And that’s what it’s all about.”

Lens put his ingenuity to the test by asking what he’d call the contraption. “I’ll have to think about that,” Mr. Mills said over the phone on Wednesday morning.